Michael Eric Dyson Is the author of the new book "I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr." (The Free Press). In It, Dyson argues that Martin Luther King Jr, the human being, with flaws and gifts serves us better than the romanticized and Idealized King. Dyson is also the author of "Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X," and other books. Dyson Is an ordained Baptist minister and a Professor at DePaul University.
Karl Evanzz is an on-line editor at the Washington Post, and author of "The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad" (Pantheon Books) the founder and "Prophet" of the Nation of Islam. Evanzz talked to Muhammad's children, his apostles, and had access to previously unreleased FBI files about him.
David Reimer was born a boy in 1967, but after a botched circumcision, and on the advise of doctors, his sex was surgically altered and he was raised as a girl. He also had an identical twin brother. Told of his surgery at the age of 14, Reimer decided to live as a male. Reimer’s case became a landmark because of its value to the study of nature vs. nurture. He’s the subject of the new book, “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl” (HarperCollins) by John Colapinto. We’ll hear from Reimer and Colapinto.
Jazz mandolinist Don Stiernberg (STEERN-berg). Stiernberg is a 20 year veteran of music and studied under the jazz mandolinist Jethro Berns. His new jazz mandolin album is called “About Time” and is the debut album on a new label. (Blue Night Records, P.O. Box 4951, Skokie, IL 60076-4951, e-mail: HYPERLINK "http://www.bluenightrecords.com" www.bluenightrecords.com. Also available thru Amazon.com)
Writer and traveler Patrick Symmes. He writes about Latin American politics, globalization and Third world travel for the magazines Harper’s, Outside, Wired, and Conde Nast Traveler. He’s written his first book: “Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend” (Vintage Books). Symmes traces the path of Ernesto “Che” Guevara who in 1952 traveled via motorcycle across South America from Argentina to Cuba and emerged a revolutionary. Guevara was an upper class Argentine medical student before he started the journey, but the poverty he saw radicalized him.
Songwriter, producer, and Instrumentalist of the alternative band Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt. The group has produced 6 albums. Their newest Is the three-CD "69 Love Songs," (Merge) which Is a genre blending collection of love songs like"Underwear" and "If You don't Cry." This album topped our rock critic Ken Tucker's list of the best CDS of 1999.
Charles Schulz, the creator of the cartoon strip "Peanuts" died Saturday night. He was 77 years old and had recently been diagnosed with colon cancer. He died the night before his final cartoon ran In the Sunday papers. We remember him with an excerpt of our 1990 Interview With him. (REBROADCAST from 12/18/90)
Legal expert on animal protection law, Steven Wise. He teaches "Animal Rights Law" at Harvard Law School and other colleges, and Is former president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. In his new book "Rattling the Cage: Towards Legal Rights for Animals" (Perseus Books) he uses scientific research about the Intelligence and emotional capacity of animals to argue for their basic legal rights.
Co-founder of the Siberian Tiger Project Maurice Hornocker and an authority on the great cats. His photographs of Tigers are featured In "Tigers In the Snow" (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux) by Peter Matthiessen about the tigers of Siberia. The Siberian Tiger Project was founded to study and protect these tigers who are threatened with extinction because of poaching and loss of habitat. Hornocker Is also director of the Hornocker Wildlife Institute at the University of Idaho.
New York Times Reporter Roger Cohen ("Coan") talks about national and international reaction to the far right Freedom party in Austria. Roger Cohen is the Times’ Bureau Chief in Berlin. He has also reported from Bosnia and wrote "Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo" (Random House) about covering the war in Bosnia.
Book Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews two popular books from last year, that have just been published in paperback: Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine (Little Brown and Co.) by Thom Jones and The Intuitionist (Anchor Books) by Colson Whitehead.
Anthropologist and co-founder of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, Mercedes Doretti. The group was founded in 1984 to investigate the fate of persons who had been “disappeared” by the former Argentinean military regime. The team consisting of an anthropologist, pathologist, radiologist, ballistic expert, and an archaeologist exhume grave sites, and the sites of massacres to determine the truth behind what happened, and to identify skeletal remains. Since their initial work in Argentina, the EAAF has worked in many other countries to investigate human rights abuses.
An expert in forensic anthropology Dr. Clyde Snow He first developed the forensic team approach to investigating human rights abuses and acted as trainer and mentor to the EAAF team.
Film director and Tibetan Buddhist lama Khyentse Norbu. He's making his directorial debut with the new film "The Cup" about a group of Monk's who are soccer fans. The film was shot In a actual Monastery, and the cast is the Monks who live there. "The Cup" Is also the first feature-length movie shot In Bhutan. The film was shown at last year's The Cannes Film Festival.
